An American in Paris

I am sitting at an outdoor cafe on the stone bank of the Seine across from Ile Saint Louis, eating a crepe. I am trying to do multiple things at once here. With my non-crepe-eating hand, I have a book pressed open on the table with the base of my wrist, to keep my page.

The book hand is doing double duty holding a cigarette that is a millimeter or two away from burning into the phalanges of my index and vulgar fingers. I had given up smoking again for seriously the last time just two weeks prior but 50% of what I know about Paris comes from the flashback scenes in Casablanca and damn it a man should smoke here.

In addition to all of this I am trying to single-handedly change the perception of American tourists abroad. I am probably having the hardest time with this last part.

First of all, the book is A Moveable Feast. Reading Paris-period Hemingway in Paris is, I’m certain, the vacation reading equivalent of going to see a band and wearing their shirt to the show. I am the sun visor-wearing middle-aged woman at the Grand Canyon in a jumper embroidered with a wolf that says GRAND CANYON across the top.

Secondly (and much more importantly) I do not speak a lick of French. This is my chief concern.

I have met a friend for a long weekend in Paris. She is also an American and – like me – has only the lightest, dinner menu-capable grasp of French. Together we are a juggernaut of well-meaning but stereotypical American ignorance. I am certain that the Parisians around us are surprised that we are not standing in Burger King, demanding that our le Whoppers be made our way.

I should tell you that this is my first adult vacation overseas. This is not to say I’ve never been overseas. My hard-working Cuban immigrant parents made sure that we were able to go to Europe twice when I was a child, but we stuck mostly with Spain and Italy, where our Spanish allowed us to negotiate very well in the former instance and much better than expected in the latter.

Much of my early 20s was taken up by a stint in the military. This featured overseas travel, but the kind that facilitates personal growth and cultural exchange the way that Dizzee Rascal facilitates transcendental meditation. I’d done some business travel since then, but if I absorbed any local color I did so strictly between the B and C pillars of a cab that smelled not unlike a hospital ward.

So Paris then, overseas on leisure from my new home in London. For the first time in a place where I have all the language comprehension of Clever Hans but still expecting to enjoy myself. I am above all things intent on not being an American tourist.

On the cafe table under the Hemingway is my primary resource in this effort: Rick Steves’ French Phrasebook & Dictionary, procured on-site from an English-language book dealer on the same street as our apartment.

In his introduction to the phrasebook, Rick Steves begins with a confident assertion. “I am probably the only monoglot audacious enough to write a series of foreign-language phrasebooks.” This did not inspire me with confidence, but you go to the Seine with the phrasebook you’ve got.

After breakfast that morning I had broken in the book with a transaction for some contact lens fluid, but I’d made mess of it, creating something that resembled that Monty Python sketch with the Hungarian.

My friend watches a group of Brazilian buskers who had set up shop a few feet away from us perform “Hotel California” in Portuguese. I divert my crepe hand to catch the waiter’s attention and motion for him to come over. I rifle through to a part of the phrasebook that I’d previously dog-eared.

Monsieur,” I begin. And then halt. I’m at the wrong section. I smile at the waiter but he is unfazed. Flip flip flip through the book, past smiling monoglot Rick Steves, past handy phrases for roadside emergencies, past a cheeky section for picking up girls. “L’addition, si vous plait.”

He immediately produces the bill from a pocket of his apron. I hand him a Euro note that covers it and I am well pleased with myself.

When he returns with my change, the waiter points a finger to the Hemingway, now laying askew on the cafe table, my marked page lost to the breeze

“I love A Moveable Feast, I envy that you’re reading it in its original language,” he says. His English is light and dinner-menu capable, but for a dinner menu written by David Foster Wallace that includes a detailed etymology of the entrees.

All I say is “de rein.” He moves off to the next table. Around the cafe people are fairly enraptured by the Brazileros, heads bobbing in something approaching time.

In the Marine Corps, I was a Fantasia caricature of an American tourist: an unwelcome presence in a foreign country, conversing with the locals in their own tongue only with the occasion to apply flexi-cuffs to their wrists. If I’m driven to be the most considerate American tourist on Earth, maybe I’m the only one worrying about that.

Paris does not need you to be Rick from Casablanca. Or freshly re-acquainted with the Lost Generation. I start to watch the buskers and then bum a cigarette to a Parisian who has pantomimed what she wants. “Merci”, she says. “De rein”, I say. I think to myself that I will come back here soon.

Fernandorizo Rizo is a guest blogger on Little Break Big Difference. If you would like to find out more about Fernandorizo or read more of his work you can visit his blog at fernandorizo.typepad.com.